New Florence. New Renaissance.

Wave Power

CalWave, an underwater mechanism of springy fiberglass “carpets,” generates electricity from ocean waves more efficiently and less obtrusively than wave-energy systems at the surface now in use in Hawaii and other places.

CalWave plans to switch on an 8-foot-by-30-foot prototype plant off the San Diego coast late this year. Lehmann says it will cost about $80,000 to build and generate 80 kilowatts of power, enough to run 180 homes. For commercial operations, multiple units will link together to form wider carpets. Lehmann and Haji are talking with IDE Technologies, which is building a $1 billion desalination plant in Carlsbad, Calif., about using CalWave as a power source.

Businessweek

The more wacky the idea the better?

At Shasta Ventures, we focus on investing at the early stage, so we studied 32 high value consumer companies to see what they looked like around their Series A. Our research included 25 billion dollar companies (as measured by $1 billion+ last round valuations, acquisition prices, or public market caps) and 7 high-flying private companies with billion dollar potential.

Our analysis discovered that many billion dollar companies have ideas that were easy to dismiss at first. How many people really ride in black cars? Who really wants to watch live video streaming of people playing video games? Why does anyone care about yet another cloud backup and sync service? Photo messages… that disappear?!?! How many people are interested in renting a couch in someone’s home?

It turns out that the biggest ideas are not clear when you first see or hear them, either because the idea seems small, regulations are high, or the fundamental assumption seems flawed. However, successful companies often start with executing very well on an initial concept that is the beginning to a much bigger offering.

Space Bins

Space Bins on an Alaska Airlines 737-900ER will hold as many as 174 standard carry-on bags, a 48 percent increase compared to current bins that hold up to 117 bags. Space Bins are deep enough to store nonstandard items, such as a guitar.

When open, the bin’s bottom edge hangs about 2 inches lower, which means people don’t have to lift their bags as high to load them. The deeper bins allow more bags to be stowed, and let customers load bags with less struggle.

That should cut boarding times, improve on-time performance and require less intervention from flight attendants.

Alaska Airlines

 

Bike “autobahn”

Munich’s proposal imagines a new 14-path network of broad, two-way, entirely segregated bike highways that have neither crossroads nor traffic lights to hold up circulation. While still at the blueprint phase, Munich’s plans could well represent the shape of things to come across Northern Europe. As the provision of roadside bike paths is increasingly being accepted as a civic obligation rather than a perk, cities and regions are moving on to create a second wave of bike infrastructure that is heavier, more highly protected,and considerably more expensive.

Calling a bike path an autobahn might sound grandiose, but what Munich’s plan proposes is certainly heftier and more ambitious than what it provides cyclists with at present. Currently, German cities’ bike lanes are typically single-file affairs that are marked out by special paint or paving but not necessarily protected from cars by barriers. Where possible, they are carved out from sidewalk rather than road space.

Citylab

Photo Credit

Supercomputers and Fuel Efficiency

Engineers with the BMI Corporation and SmartTruck Systems ran models on Jaguar and Titan, two of the fastest supercomputers in the world available for open science projects.Truck models were put through computational fluid dynamics simulations, which were verified to accurately predict airflow within a tenth of an inch on a real vehicle. They also applied a genetic algorithm that mimicked the process of natural selection to optimize their design.

The work resulted in a trailer undercarriage tray that reduced drag and brought fuel savings of 6 percent. With additional refinements and components behind the trailer tandems and on the trailer’s sides, the 300-pound SmartTruck system can achieve 10 percent fuel savings.

Txchnologist

 

Extreme Oil

In a windowless conference room in Anchorage, a dozen Royal Dutch Shell employees report on the highest-profile oil project in the multinational’s vast global portfolio. Warmed by mid-July temperatures, Arctic ice in the Chukchi Sea, northwest of the Alaskan mainland, is receding. Storms are easing; helicopter flights will soon resume. Underwater volcanoes—yes, volcanoes—are dormant. “That’s good news for us,” Ann Pickard, Shell’s top executive for the Arctic, whispers to a visitor.

Overhead, a bank of video monitors displays blinking green radar images of an armada of Shell vessels converging on a prospect called Burger J. Company geologists believe that beneath Burger J—70 miles offshore and 800 miles from the Anchorage command center—lie up to 15 billion barrels of oil. An additional 11 billion barrels are thought to be buried due east under the Beaufort Sea. All told, Arctic waters cover about 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered petroleum, or enough to supply the U.S. for more than a decade, according to government estimates.

BusinessWeek

Emotions analytics

Over the past few years, big companies, including Unilever and Coca-Cola, have used emotions analytics to better understand customers' likes and dislikes and to tailor marketing and advertising campaigns. About a dozen companies are making and supporting such software, according to researcher Crone Consulting.

The market leaders include Emotient, a startup in San Diego, and Affectiva in Waltham, Mass. Unilever relies on Affectiva's emotions analysis to assess customer reactions to its ads. Emotient's software will be used in Stoneware's classroom product. And Emotient tested its software with the NBA's Golden State Warriors to study how spectators respond to activities such as a dance cam.

Sydney Morning Herald

 

 

Tracking the illegal ivory trade

A great story in National Geographic to embed and then track artificial tusks with GPS chips into the ivory supply chain.

"To start, Christy asked taxidermist George Dante and Quintin Kermeen, founder and president of Telemetry Solutions, to lend their expertise to the project.

Real ivory is tough to impersonate. First of all, it won't melt when you hold a flame to it. Genuine ivory also has "Schreger lines" — small imperfections on the cut-end of the tusk, much like rings on a tree trunk, that show the elephant's age.

Despite these challenges, Dante created such a believable version that Christy and his editor were detained for a night at an airport in Tanzania.Officials thought the tusks were real even though Christy and his editor had notes from the US Fish and Wildlife Service and National Geographic certifying the tusks were artificial.

After navigating a few other hiccups, Christy dropped the tusks directly into the ivory supply chain through the coastal city of Mboki in the Central African Republic."

The hybrid airplane

Dutch airline KLM and Delft University of Technology have released concept designs for an aircraft with a "blended wing body", which could transport passengers non stop from Europe to Australia.

The AHEAD aircraft, which stands for Advanced Hybrid Engine Aircraft Development, would carry 300 passengers over a range of 14,000 kilometres – approximately the distance from Amsterdam to Perth.

To improve aircraft efficiency and allow for longer flights, KLM's engineering and maintenance department worked with engineers and designers at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The result is a design that features two sets of wings – a small pair by the nose and a large set at the rear – that blend into the body.

De Zeen

Breaking Apple’s Taboos

As it nears a size and scope never before approached by a technology company, Apple is doing things its executives said it never would.

Apple’s co-founder, Steven P. Jobs, once announced that using a stylus with a computing device was passé. But guess what? The company is now offering a stylus, called Apple Pencil, for $100. And in a move sure to make Apple old- timers squirm, the newest version of iPad, which has an optional keyboard that attaches to the tablet, is even imitating some of tile features of Microsoft’s competing product, called the Surface.

New York Times